The third and final book in this trilogy is being released next month. Which kind of surprises me because I thought it was supposed to be a four book series.
I’ll admit I haven’t read them yet. But the first two books were titled Fall of Giants and Winter of the World, so there seemed to be a four seasons theme going on. And I was aware that the first book covered a period from 1911 to 1924 and the second covered from 1933 to 1949 - so there seemed to be plenty of a century left for two more books. But the third book is titled Edge of Eternity and from descriptions it will cover a period from the 1960’s through 2014.
Did I just misinterpret the signs? Or were a planned third and fourth book shrunk down into a single volume?
A bump just in case there are any Follett fans who missed this.
I always thought it was planned to be a trilogy. I haven’t given it much attention, though. It’s possible it was planned to be four books.
I’m a huge fan of Follett and was planning on reading them. However, I’m impatient, so I was waiting for all of them to come out at once and then I can read them all straight through without waiting for new books.
Plus, I hate hardcovers. I’m on the fence about these. I’ll either buy them on Amazon for online reading or get the paperbacks as a set when they come out.
Is it any good? The concept is what Follett does best: Long story arcs with lots of stuff going on.
I’m about 1/4 through Edge of Eternity.
The series does an amazing job of weaving Follett’s fictional characters through real historical events. Conveniently he provides a list of characters and real historical people at the beginning of each book so you can sort through who’s who.
I only heard about the series around the time Edge of Eternity came out, and so really can’t address the OP’s question about whether it was intended to be a trilogy or a 4-book series. I guess I never made the seasonal connection between FALL of Giants & WINTER of the World; I just thought of Fall in the sense of failing.
But the stories and characters are compelling, and I strongly recommend this series to any fan of historical fiction.
I’m about 3/4 of the way through Edge of Eternity, and I’ve read the other two.
Love, love this trilogy. Cliche’d though it sounds, he is really bringing history to life. I keep stopping to get some more background on historical figures, politics and other happenings and it seems to non-historian me that he is sticking very closely to what really happened. His fictional characters and the way he’s woven them into the retelling of actual events is entirely plausible.
I’ve learned more history through these three books than I did all the way through high school, I think. I can’t see the third book broken into two separate ones though. The first and second of the series covered two world wars; I don’t see enough material in the last 50 years to merit two books without getting into conflicts in the Middle East, which he hasn’t mentioned at all.